These poem fragments go with Mideatheire, a Korsakow film that links them with video and makes the order and repetition of the lines jumbled and determined in part by the user. For further discussion about the project, I’ve written a reflection on my student blog.

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The physical movement through space over time is propelling her forwards, towards, closer to the end.

The light danced off her fingertips and landed in her hair. She played with it.

“Can you see what I see?” She asked. “No,” I replied, “I can only see through my eyes.”

“Sometimes we move sideways,” she murmured, as if she’d forgotten I was there.

“What makes it home?” I asked. “Difference,” came her reply. “And details, memories and love.”

The blood in her veins would run like a river towards the ocean if she gave it the chance. But she knew better than that. She knew the ocean wasn’t the end.

“Well that’s just it!” She exclaimed. “Isn’t it? The circle of life and death and we all just go around and around and call it living.”

She sighed like the weight of the world had taken up residence on her shoulders. “I need a break,” she confided, “From all of this.”

“Is death the end? Or a beginning?” I asked. She lamented, “It’s just a continuation.”

She pirouetted down the hall and into the room and quoted, “But we do not have to dance.”

She took a step back, followed by a deep breath. Fear radiated from her pores.

“But you’re so far away!” I shouted. “That depends on your perspective,” came her reply.

“These days I breathe sadness,” she confessed as though it was something I should have known already.

She took care to notice the little things in life. That’s what made her different.

“Nobody sees the little things,” she explained. “They’re all looking for the mountains that face the sea.”

“When will you return?” I asked. She just glanced at me and smiled.

“Sometimes we can take our time,” she explained, “and sometimes we don’t have that luxury.”

Ah! But what’s in a glance in a moment that cannot be found again?

“You see?” She laughed. “There you go again on the same track, round and round.”

“What if you took a break from all this?” I suggested and she cried and told me it’s impossible.